Last Tuesday Katie Rae and Anantha Chandrakasan formally introduced The Engine to a packed and overflowing group of entrepreneurs and investors at the MIT Media Lab.

The Engine is exactly President Reif’s vision of an “innovation orchard”, a solution to the innovation gap between hard sciences and venture funding. In October 2016, MIT invested $25M as a Limited Partner into The Engine Accelerator Fund, which has raised a total of $150M to date.

It takes years of research and a tremendous amount of brain power and person-hours to create a scientific innovation. Often, taking that innovation out of the lab and into the business is difficult because of a lack of available funding or resources to turn the science into a workable prototype.

“Hard tech gets caught in this gap,” says Rae, CEO of The Engine. “Can we build a platform that makes it easier and cheaper for an entrepreneur to build a hard tech problem?”

What’s the difference between a hard tech company and a soft tech company? Hard tech lies on years of real science, you can’t hack it together in one night in your dorm room.

Set to open its doors in late April to May, The Engine is located in Central Square at 501 Massachusetts Avenue. It has already opened its application process and is looking to accept 50-60 early stage hard tech startups over the next 12 months.

Regarding the founder community at The Engine, “there’s probably nothing I’ll protect more than making sure that the founders can connect, can be there for each other, helping and pushing each other, because when that’s there, it’s magical,” says Rae, former Managing Director of TechStars Boston.

What types of founders are they looking for?

“We are investing into our ecosystem and into entrepreneurs. I want hard tech problems and great entrepreneurs. You cannot force people into ideas, they have to actually want to bring them to life as a team and create a company, and I want to support people that want that. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, some people should remain scientists and that’s okay - we want to be the most incredible support system you can find and have the dollars to do that.”

Does that sound like you? The doors to The Engine are open, apply here.

Is all science good? What questions do we ask ourselves as new science gets turned into new technologies. Should we have impact KPIs or consider long term ramifications? And who gets to make those decisions - VCs and investors?